Soul Awakening: The Journey from Ego to Essence
Book One: Birthing the Luminous Self Trilogy

Introduction

Eco-death or Ego-death?

    There has never been a time like this on planet Earth. Whether we’re scanning the internet, listening to the latest news, or quietly communing with our inner world, we can’t help sensing something immensely powerful going on. Crisis, change and revolution are in the air. As we write, millions in the Mideast are rising up to claim the sovereignty that is their birthright. Billions more the world over still suffer from repressive regimes and unequal distribution of resources. Climate change, weather anomalies and earth changes are on the increase, and, combined with the nuclear catastrophe in Japan, present a dire specter that appears to be approaching apocalyptic proportions.
    The winds of change are blowing through our individual worlds as well, accelerating the rate of evolutionary transformation with each passing day. The same desire for freedom, peace and fulfillment that is spawning mass uprisings reverberates within each of our hearts. As we feel the increasing dis-ease of a way of life that is no longer workable, our inner worlds erupt with unresolved emotions seeking healing and acceptance. Daily life is pervaded with a rising sense that major changes are needed, and a knowing that so much more is possible.      
    The myriad problems we face are complex, multifaceted, and interwoven.  Consider the ways that energy, pollution, economics, the food supply, and global power politics are all inextricably linked. Where do we begin, when everything is so interconnected? Through earthly eyes, the situation can certainly look hopeless. We are challenged as never before to discover a vaster, more inclusive, and more hopeful perspective.
    The two of us are convinced that everything going on “out there” echoes one fundamental issue “in here” -- we human beings have lost touch with who and what we truly are. Asleep in the human condition, we have forgotten that we are vast, limitless souls, facets of the Divine that know how to live in harmony with all other forms of life. Our overwhelming crises stem from egos running wild, obsessed with gaining ever more for themselves with no thought of anyone else, much less of preserving the very planet we all live upon. To some degree, each of us participates in this wholesale destruction of life. For all of us, the way beyond it will be revealed as we return to the soul. For this is our true identity as facets of the One Great Being.
    What mystics, saints and sages have always known is now being confirmed by quantum physics, transpersonal psychology, and holographic brain theory: Outer reality is a direct reflection of what is present within our individual and collective consciousness. Our ubiquitous crises can’t be fixed or changed “out there.” They will resolve only as a function of a radical, collective change “in here.” The solutions to humanity’s dilemmas will not be found within the level of understanding that created the problems. They can only emerge from a state of consciousness that can hold them all within a vaster, unified field of awareness. That unified perspective is the natural state of the soul, the presence of the Divine within each one of us.
    Futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard has dedicated her life to reframing the crises that beset us into an unparalleled evolutionary opportunity. One of this visionary’s favorite statements is “Our crisis is a birth.” From this perspective, the challenges we face personally and planetarily are evolutionary drivers shepherding us toward the quantum leap our species must take if it is to survive. In this light, the ultimate solutions cannot be found in new technologies, greater energy efficiency, or revamped organizational structures. Similarly, to truly flourish, our personal worlds need far more than a new diet or drug, a change of career or relationship, or even more money. 
   

Soul Awakening: The Answer to all Crises

    When we are in touch with the soul, we directly experience that we are all one interconnected being. It is impossible to exploit, dominate, injure or destroy another human being when we are awake to this reality.  As souls, we view all of life, including the very planet we live upon, as sacred. Destroying life for monetary gain becomes unthinkable when our identity rests in the soul, rather than the ego. In a soul-awakened species, wars, domestic violence, poverty, political and religious divisiveness, racism, and all other forms of separation simply do not exist.
    The soul is inextricably rooted within the deeper intelligence that sustains and furthers all life. This unfathomable intelligence orchestrates the billions of processes that keep our bodies healthy and alive. It is omnipresent as the essence of all life, informing and choreographing the unified, harmonious interplay of all species. When we are in communion with the soul, we attune to this larger, collective soul, which then guides our every action in perfect harmony with it. Since their awareness is embedded within this intelligence, indigenous peoples know exactly how they must live in order to remain in harmony with the larger forces. They don’t need computer models or studies to know what furthers life; their inner sensings tell them everything they need to know.     
    In contrast, when consciousness is oblivious to the soul, we feel an inner emptiness, an insatiable hole that we try to fill in countless ways. We endlessly endeavor to acquire and consume whatever we believe will assuage the emptiness, but all our efforts come up short. The existential pain and suffering we are left with spawn all forms of addiction. Our insatiable cravings have gotten so out of control that we have become addicted to consuming our very planet, as Al Gore famously expressed.   
    In all of our outer seeking, we never find what we are truly looking for: the love, light, and life of the soul. Everything we have ever sought without is always, already hidden within us. And the soul is not something we have; we are the luminous, divine presence that is our soul’s core nature. The peace, satisfaction, abundance, joy, and all other divine qualities we hope to secure “out there” can only be found as we reconnect with the soul, our true Self. 
    Ego-death or Eco-death? The doorways stand before us. Which will we choose? Only a soul-awakened species will survive the perfect storm that lies directly ahead.     
 

Birthing the Luminous Self

    Fortunately for us all, awakening to the soul as our true nature is exactly the evolutionary vector that lies before us. This immense change is not adequately described by the word transformation. What we are experiencing could more accurately be called a transmutation -- transformation on steroids -- for we are literally becoming a new species. The ego-based structures that surrounds us are crumbling as new, soul-awakened ways of being come forth. As the old decays and disintegrates, it forms the compost for the new life that is already beginning to emerge. This is as true within us as without.
    Decades ago, Sri Aurobindo and his consort, The Mother, foretold the birth of a new species with superhuman capacities, and explored the consciousness such beings would embody. Incan Quero shamans tell us we will go through a radical death and rebirth after which we will emerge as “homo luminous”, a spiritually advanced species. Hopis, Aztecs, and Mayans anticipate the end of the current age, believing that a great purification will be followed by the birth of an enlightened humanity. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a philosopher and Jesuit priest, believed humanity and the Earth would arrive at an omega point, which would spell the end of the human species as we have known it and be followed by a “Christification of the Earth.” He asserted that in the newly-emerging unified consciousness, all will know their oneness with God. 
    The prophetic cosmologies of many of the world’s great spiritual traditions predict chaos and apocalypse at the end of the age. They also foretell the coming of a messiah, whether as the Second Coming of the Christ, the Kalki Avatar in Hinduism, the Imam Mehdi in Islam, or the Maitreya Buddha. While most conceptualize this incarnation of divinity in the form of a single, godlike human, the understanding is emerging that, while divine beings may descend to Earth, a collective divine incarnation will manifest as humanity awakens.
    The end of the age is here. The long-awaited spiritual “savior” is beginning to incarnate in and as each one of us. While the evolutionary process may take many hundreds of years to complete, the transmutation is underway in our minds, bodies, hearts, and souls. The Luminous Self has lived within us forever, waiting for the moment when it could finally fully radiate out into the world. As we birth the Luminous Self, we bring forth the contribution only we can make to the collective awakening. We understand why we have returned to Earth at this pivotal time, and at last fulfill our destiny as a soul in the human experience. Joining in oneness with other awakening souls, we co-create the world we envision in our heart of hearts.


From Human Caterpillars to Multidimensional Souls

    Long ago, when we incarnated into these human forms, we compressed our multidimensional vastness into third-dimensional bodies so that we could explore life within the material plane. In the process, we forgot our boundless, divine origins, believing that only what we could see, hear, taste, smell, and feel was real. Like caterpillars, we have “crawled” on the earth for millennia, exploring physical reality while we slowly evolved during each lifetime.
    Now, at this extraordinary time on the planet, we are reawakening to our true, unlimited nature. A stirring inside tells us we are about to experience life in a whole new way. As soul-awakened, multidimensional butterflies, we will soar free of all earthly limitation and suffering. Yet we cannot get from here to there without a complete metamorphosis of our being. We must die to who and what we thought we were, so we can be reborn as the brilliant butterflies we have always been, deep inside.
    Like earthbound caterpillars, many human beings are as yet unaware that they are about to undergo a radical transformation. But the first reawakening souls have  already entered the chrysalis, the evolutionary crucible in which our old identity literally dissolves away. At times, this process feels like a death, for in order for the butterfly to emerge, virtually nothing of the caterpillar can remain. Just as a caterpillar’s solid form literally liquifies within the chrysalis, our previous identities and ways of being are disintegrating so that entirely new expressions can be born.
    Humanity is now beginning its collective metamorphosis. All around us are signs of the total, systemic breakdown that must occur so that we can be reborn as multidimensional butterflies. Individually and collectively, we must surrender who and what we thought we were in order to be born into who we truly are. In the process, we will let go of all we thought life was about, all we believed possible. As the old, third-dimensional structures dissolve, within and without, we will emerge as illumined, multidimensional beings.
    How will we get from where we are now to this amazing eventuality? The mysterious metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly offers some helpful clues. Within the chrysalis, as the caterpillar dissolves into an amorphous mass, something magical happens. New structures called “imaginal cells” begin to appear, and they contain the living template that will unfold as the butterfly. Similarly, the divine presence within each of our souls begins to come forth as we become aware we are not the limited, human “caterpillar” self we had thought, but something far more. As we deepen in the soul, we activate the “imaginal cells” of our divine essence, which have been waiting for us to consciously participate in the transmutational process. Now, we are finally ready to actualize all of who we can be. 
    Millions of us are now realizing that we are imaginal cells within the collective body human, here to help catalyze the shift from limited, earthbound caterpillar into the full, radiant awakening of the butterfly. Since you have been drawn to this book, you are most likely one of these souls. Like the two of us and countless others, you are in the process of bringing forth the multidimensional, luminous presence that is who you really are, beneath the disguise of your earthly form. Your soul, the core essence that radiates from your heart of hearts, is the seed crystal around which the old that is dying will re-form itself into the New that is now being born. 
    For those who have already entered the chrysalis, transformation has become the central focus of life. Just as a caterpillar doesn’t know how to become a butterfly, or what life will be like when the transmutation is complete, we, too, are asked to surrender and submit to the unfolding mystery of the process. While a part of us may want to hang on to what has been, another, bigger part is ready to soar free into a whole new way of being.    
    The true chrysalis lies within. In the inner realms of our soul, the alchemical transformation that is taking place will naturally, gracefully outpicture in new expressions of life that are magnificent beyond imagining. Everything that is occurring, within and without, is a part of this birth. Even the innumerable crises that surround us are nothing other than the pathways through the birth canal of our individual and collective soul into the light of the New Heaven and New Earth. In perfect timing we shall emerge as the Luminous Ones, shining forth in radiant magnificence, living free and unencumbered of all that weighed us down during our caterpillar past.


Soul Awakening: Humanity’s Evolutionary Imperative

    Although the divine light has been shining in our heart of hearts all along, we may not have been in touch with that inner radiance. We might have spent decades searching the world for what can only be found within -- the love, wisdom, compassion, and limitless healing power we discover when we return home to the true Self. When we directly experience our luminous radiance, we realize the soul is who we really are, not the small, limited human being we thought we were.    
    Establishing a conscious connection with the soul is far more than a spiritual exercise or meditation technique.  Reconnecting with our inner divinity forever alters our experience of who and what we are. The answers we seek, the guidance we need, the resolution of painful patterns and issues -- all of this and more becomes available as we awaken to the soul. The two of us often joke that connecting with the soul is “one-stop shopping,” for all issues and dilemmas find resolution when we turn them over to the true Self.   
    In the days ahead, as the old, dying patterns of human culture dissolve and Earth changes and other evolutionary catalysts increase in scope and strength, our conditioned, habitual ways of being will become increasingly untenable. The only compass each of us can rely on to take us through the times to come is the inner voice of the Divine, informing us of our unique path through this all-encompassing death and rebirth. Living in communion with the soul may well become our most precious survival skill as we journey through the crises and into the new golden age.
    As we awaken to the soul, our divine essence pours forth from the core of our being.  Our human expression becomes filled with who and what we truly are, and outer life gradually transforms into a reflection of our inner wholeness and divinity. Relationships alter as we become capable of connecting with other human beings soul to soul, without ego-games and personas. Aware of our oneness with all of life, we naturally embody the Golden Rule. As the gnawing sense of lack dissolves, addictive attempts to fill the inner emptiness with the things of the outer world fall away. The life-enhancing intelligence of the soul supports healing from within and informs us of what we need to do in the outer world to resolve dis-ease on all levels of our being. As the divine template within the soul unfolds, we activate the “imaginal cells” of our sacred essence. Letting go of the concepts and perspectives that have bound us to our caterpillar identity, we blossom into the unique expression of the Divine we were always meant to be. 
    Now is the time. The radical shift from ego to soul is humanity’s next evolutionary step. It and it alone is the key to moving beyond all the crises we face. Consciously connecting with the soul and awakening our divine nature is the most evolutionary, if not rEvolutionary, act available to us now.


Our Own Journey of Soul Awakening

    The two of us were brought together through a magical, mysterious set of circumstances, far different from anything we had ever experienced in previous relationships. Almost immediately, we were taken on a journey of discovery, a “university of the soul” orchestrated by a grouping of higher-dimensional beings, that taught us how to facilitate conscious communion with the Divine within. Since 1989, we have been sharing what we’ve learned with people the world over through groups and sessions, via teleconferences and in person. While we were expanding our capacity to catalyze the transformation of egoic shadow material into realization and freedom during sessions, our own lives became a living laboratory of awakening. In the potent evolutionary crucible of daily life, everything that occurred became part of the divinely-orchestrated curriculum.
    This book distills all that we learned about reconnecting with the multidimensional Self through facilitating sessions and in our own process of soul-awakening. The stories of our own voyages from ego to essence reveal the challenges we faced all along the way. While our egos often stubbornly clung to life, the deeper impulses of the soul did their best to come forth. At times we wondered if we would make it, as all that was not of the soul disintegrated around us. But calmly and quietly, our inner divinity showed us the way through everything we faced, within and without.
    We have come to know the love, wisdom, and power of the essential Self through living into those qualities, one step at a time. Because what we share is not theoretical or abstract, but based in real-life experience, our stories provide a living transmission of the journey of soul awakening. They illustrate many of the archetypal passages we all encounter as we come home to the true Self. In our groups and teleconferences, people often tell us that hearing our stories reminds them of what is real and true in their own lives. Our experiences also convey what is possible as we let go of the ego-mind’s illusions of limitation and open to our magnificence. Neither of us can take credit for the “miracles” of grace that have blessed our lives and sessions. Most of the time, these breakthroughs occurred despite the two of us, not because we are special or unique in any way. We are as amazed as anyone at what is possible when the ego-personality gives way and the Divine steps in.
    Each of the transformational passages related in this book shifted our awareness into a more awakened, soul-embodied state. Because we have literally lived into everything we know about the soul and the Luminous Self, each of our books is imbued with the frequencies of the soul realms. The holographic imprints of the shifts in energy~consciousness that occurred are embedded in our stories. Thus, they can function like tuning forks, resonating your own inner divinity to come forth more fully.
    Instead of simply reading these stories, we suggest that you live, feel, and enter into them, just as you would while watching an engrossing movie. Invite the transformational energies each passage contains to resonate throughout your own being. In this way, it becomes possible to experience the inner shifts described here without having to actually live through the events that precipitated them. Soul Awakening contains many seeds that will germinate within you until it is time for them to sprout into outer expression. The more you let your awareness enter into our stories and experience them as if you were there with us, the stronger the transmission and the deeper within your heart of hearts the evolutionary seeds will be planted.
    Soul Awakening is designed to catalyze your unique process of soul awakening.  As you read the words and absorb all that is between the lines, the energy and consciousness of your core being will be stimulated and activated, especially if this is your conscious intention. In truth, there is only one of us, and the paths the two of us have traveled contain many archetypal phases common to us all. Invite the evolutionary transmission contained within Soul Awakening to resonate your divine core and catalyze the birth of your Luminous Self.

 

Contents


Foreword
By Kiara Windrider

Introduction

Preface

Glossary

PART ONE
Awakening Begins

1  Here We Go Again  1
2  When on Earth, Do as the Earthlings Do  11
3  Soul-Seeds are Planted  19
4  Life Starts to Unravel  23
5  New Dimensions Unfold  29
6  A Pivotal Moment Arrives  45
7  Leaving the Known World  53
8  All the Way Up, All the Way Down  63
9  Meeting our Divine Counterpart  77
10  A New Octave of Soul Life Begins  85
11  The Evolutionary Crucible of Sacred Relationship  95
12  A Vision, A Mission, A Purpose  105

PART TWO
The University of the Soul

13  All Roads Lead to the Soul  115 
14  Soul Communion: A Guided Induction  129
15  The Soul Revealed  145 
16  The Oversoul and Beyond  153
17  Discovering Our Soul Purpose  161
18  The I AM Presence and the Ascended Masters  167 
19  The Figure 8 of Soul Evolution  175

PART THREE
The Living Laboratory of Soul Awakening

20  A Crash Course in Faith and Trust  183
21  Transcending Dis-Ease  193
22  Safe at Last  199
23  The Grace of Earth Changes  203
24  The Gift of Less  217
25  The Burning Ground of Relationship  231
26  Grace in Unexpected Places  237
27  Descending into Endarkenment  243
28  A Dark Night of the Soul  249
29  An Ascension into a “Heaven” in the Mountains  259
30  A Journey into Enlifenment  263

Resources  277


 Acknowledgments  279